DORTMUND, GERMANY – 8 Aug, 2017 – Florence was created in June 2016 as a hobby project of David Hawig, a German entrepreneur, and researcher. Today, Florence is one of the most commonly used chatbots and a reference in healthcare. Named after Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing, she also puts healthcare on a new level: She is a personal health tracker and a med & pill reminder, powered by an intelligent automated messaging system. Her primary mission is to support individuals improving their adherence to recommended health & wellness care. All users have to do is to start chatting with her inside a messaging platform, like Facebook messenger, Kik or Skype.

“I think chatbots can solve a lot of the current problems of the healthcare industry and make health information more accessible for everyone,” said Andre Fialho a Ph.D. graduate with honors from the MIT-Portugal Program, who is currently working together with David on Florence. “For example, Florence can already give you additional information about the medication you’re currently taking or tell you what to do if you miss a dose of a certain prescription.”

Around 3.8 billion prescriptions are written in the U.S. alone every year (Cutler D. M., Everett W., 2010). However, over 50% of them are taken incorrectly or not at all, accounting for 1/3 to 2/3 of drug-related adverse events that result in hospital admissions (Osterberg L., Blaschke T., 2005). A study published in 2016 showed that text messaging can have a positive effect in improving adherence to long-term medications (Thakkar J., Kurup R., Laba T-L., 2016). A chatbot might be even better than simple text messaging. For example, Florence can also motivate you and show you your medication statics.

“If you see that people answered more than 200 reminders in a row, you know that you might actually help someone with your technology. And more and more people are also using other features of Florence like period or mood tracking. So, I think chatbots definitely have the potential to improve our healthcare system,” said David.

Florence was created in June 2016, and throughout her development, she has evolved from being a simple symptom checker to become focused on two main features with high demand: health tracking and med & pill reminding. She is named after Florence Nightingale, who was the founder of modern nursing.